Silhouettes are reductions, and racial stereotypes are also reductions of actual human beings. Kara Walker More Quotes by Kara Walker More Quotes From Kara Walker I trust my hand. If I go into a space with a roll of paper, I can make a work, some kind of work, and feel pretty satisfied. Kara Walker feel trust space work Challenging and highlighting abusive power dynamics in our culture is my goal; replicating them is not. Kara Walker them goal power culture I grew up partially around Stone Mountain, Georgia, and in that part of the country, there was always this aura of mythology and palpable sense of otherness about being a Southerner. Kara Walker stone always mountain country I knew I wanted to be an artist, but I didn't really know what it was I wanted to say. Kara Walker really say know artist My work is really abject and self-effacing sometimes. I mean, it's big and overwrought, but it's just paper dolls, and it's kind of silly. Kara Walker big work silly sometimes I was making big paintings with mythological themes. When I started painting black figures, the white professors were relieved, and the black students were like, 'She's on our side.' These are the kinds of issues that a white male artist just doesn't have to deal with. Kara Walker painting black artist white I don't think that my work is very moralistic - at least, I try to avoid that. I grew up with that sermonising tendency, and I don't think visual work operates like that. Kara Walker try like think work I am performing this role of the artist and this role of the 'negress' coming into a white-box institution. It's kind of a self-appointed role: the self-designated negress. Kara Walker institution coming i-am artist There was a manifesto in the late '60s/early '70s, and it basically laid out what 'black art' was and that it should embrace black history and black culture. There were all these rules - I was shocked, when I found it in a book, that it even existed, that it would demarcate these artists. Kara Walker black culture history art A lot of what I was wanting to do in my work and what I have been doing has been about the unexpected... that unexpected situation of wanting to be the heroine and yet wanting to kill the heroine at the same time. Kara Walker situation unexpected work time I'm a sponge for historical images of black people and black history on film. Kara Walker black historical history people I've seen people glaze over when they're confronted with racism, and there's nothing more, you know, damning and demeaning to having any kind of ideology than people just walking the walk and saying what they're supposed to say and nodding, and nobody feels anything. Kara Walker walk you racism people I guess there was a little bit of a slight rebellion, maybe a little bit of a renegade desire that made me realize at some point in my adolescence that I really liked pictures that told stories of things - genre paintings, historical paintings - the sort of derivatives we get in contemporary society. Kara Walker pictures realize me society I don't know how much I believe in redemptive stories, even though people want them and strive for them. Kara Walker know want believe people I never learned how to be adequately black. I never learned how to be black at all. Kara Walker learned how never black Humor's always been the problem of my work, hasn't it? When working, I feel satisfied when I surprise myself. And when I surprise myself, I wind up laughing. Kara Walker feel myself humor work
